Goodbye 2009

The old year is drawing to a close. Tomorrow is New Year's Eve and many thoughts are swirling through my head as I am about to go to sleep--

--2009 was an exciting year. I got to go to Chicago, Puerto Rico, Louisville, New Orleans, Winter Park, Florida, Plattsburgh, NY, Vermont, and Athens. My company was sold (but "I'm not afraid" as Bette Davis said to Gladys Cooper in Now Voyager). I had the enormous challenge of staging a major event--rounding up speakers, putting together panels, etc. I was on the red carpet at the Tonys. I served as treasurer for my co-op. I added to my comic book collection.

--I feel sad that Broadway cannot sustain even well-reviewed shows like Brighton Beach Memoirs, Ragtime, and Finian's Rainbow just because they have no big names.

--I like Web Soup on G4 because the host Chris Hardwick is super-cute and funny, but it's weird watching G4. It's a real straight-boy network full of video games and girls in lingerie. A sort of geeky version of Spike. Not at all like Bravo or Lifetime.

--In a way I'm very geeky but in a gay way. I DVRed the new episodes of Doctor Who on BBC-America. BTW, why is Docto Who no longer on the Sci-Fi Channel or SyFy as they now call it.

--I saw Up in the Air on Monday at BAM with my friend Diane. Afterwards we went to the apartment where she was catsitting for friends who were vacationing for the holidays. We had some red wine while the cats roamed the place. It was strange drinking in an apartment where neither of us lived. Diane was going to sleep over, so at about 10 PM I went into the unfamiliar Brooklyn streets to take the G train home. It was equally strange to take that train since I never do. All those strange stations with names I didn't recognize.

No new year's resolutions. Just continuing on. These are the last few random ramblings of 2009 of my scatteshot mind. Tomorrow we are driving to Philly to visit my parents.

Farewell to Athens

On my last day in Athens, I had to send out all my postcards. The stamps were so beautiful, I bought some extra and addressed a postcard to myself so I could have the cancelled stamp. I collect postcards from places I've been or from friends who sent them. This would be the first time I sent myself one. This way I'd know when everybody else got theirs. It gave me an odd sense of accomplishment. Then I was determined to find the Herakleidon Museum which had an exhibit of Degas sculptures. It was difficult to find, tucked away on a little side street near the Thissio metro station, but it was worth it. The Herakleidon is a small gem of a museum, a former private home, very intimate. There were over 70 gorgeous Degas sculptures including the famous one of the young ballet dancer. I'm not sure if it's the same one as in the Clark Institute in Williamstown. Beautiful music from the period played.

After lunch, I strolled around the Thissio square, near Monasteriki. Street vendors were selling stamps, coins, old watches, binoculars, pins from the Olympics, and various bric-a-brac. There were hordes of black men with huge bundles running from place to place from the police. They would drop their burdens which contained what appeared to be knockoffs of designer bags until they got a signal that the cops were nearby. Then they'd pick up and run off.

I wandered to the Royal Gardens and found a gallery which sported an exhibition of movie posters from various eras and countries. That was a lot of fun. Back in the hotel, I watched TV til Jerry got back from Turkey--interesting how the news media in Europe is totally to the left, there was a commentator on RT, the Russian network who suggested the Obama administration bribed the Nobel committee to get the president the Peace Prize--and then we all went out to celebrate our last night. We ate at a very good place with a view of the Acropolis. I told Jerry and his colleagues if I needed to write a doctoral thesis it would be on The Cult of the Virgin: Athena, Mary, Elizabeth I, and Doris Day. Prior to this trip, I hadn't known Athena was a virgin goddess.

The flight back to NYC was about ten hours, but I had my anti-jet pills. They showed four movies--all garbage. Four Christmases, The Time Traveller's Wife, Land of the Lost, and Post Graduate. I didn't watch any of them--that is I didn't listen to the sound on the headphones. The images were enough to tell me how stupid they were. All I could think of the films were "Wow, Carol Burnett, Robert Duvall, and Sissy Spacek must need money." Then they showed TV episodes and it was the same episode of The Simpsons I saw on the last Delta flight I took which was about a year ago!

More Photos from Greece

In the previous post, the stupid thing uploaded the photo of the fisherman rather than the temple. So here's the temple and a shot of Hydra, my favorite of the three ports. Besides, I hear blog posts should be shorter anyway.

Mini-Cruise of the Islands

(ATHENS, GREECE) On Thursday, Dec. 17, Jerry went on to Istanbul for another conference, while I stayed behind in Athens. Thurs. morning we both went to the Byzantine Museum and during lunch in Syntagma Square we watched the general strikers--Mike told us the day before in Delphi that they have these strikes about twice a month, just for the unions to make a point. Note: They also had a small Andy warhol exhibit since it was also about icons. Then Jerry left to catch his plane and I took one of the City Tours. I had seen a lot of what was covered including the Acropolis and the Agora, but it was good to get a feel for the whole city. I also got a much better look at the Academy of Arts and Scienes which was decorated with beautiful statues of Athena and Apollo. Someone had spray painted the word RESIST on the columns.

The next day, I was up at 6 a.m. for a very touristy cruise to three Greek islands--Agina, Poros and Hydra. The passengers were about 20 percent American and European and the rest were Asian, but overwhelmingly Japanese. We basically had about an hour in each port to stroll around the picturesque waterfront area.In Agina, for an extra 25 Euros, we could take a tour of the temple to Apheia, the river goddess (pictured).

I latched onto an older American couple from Florida and by coincidence, the husband had his wallet stolen at the same metro as Jerry. So here's another travel tip--when in Athens avoid the Monasteriki station. By another coincidence, the husband was a classmate of Gore Vidal at Philip Exeter and I was reading Hollywood by Vidal at the time.

Of the three islands, I liked Hydra (pronounced HEE-dra) best. The waterfront was full of stray dogs and cats and donkeys--there are no cars allowed because the streets are so narrow, so the donkeys are the main means of transportation. I wandered around and took shots of fishermen, donkeys, churches, brightly painted windows, old men and little boys pushing carts--there are no cars, remember.

After Hyrda, we had lunch on board. The American couple and I sat with three people from Egpyt. Poros was next and not as cute as Hydra, but I got a great shot of a fisherman mending his net. I just tried to upload it and stupid Blogger erased everything I had written since the last upload. So I'll put that in a separate post.

Then in Agina, we took a bus out to the mountain to see the temple of the river goddess. We were on the bus with the Chinese people. Our guide from the boat--a cigarette-voiced woman who sounded like Melina Mercouri, it seems all Greek women sound like that--would tell us about the pistachio nut trees and the legend of the island, then hand the microphone to the Chinese guide.

We had 20 minutes at the temple and it was very tourist-y with four busloads of people from the boat taking pictures. But it was worth the trip because it was sunset and the effect was quite dramatic against the ancient columns. Of course, there was a souvenir stand where we were sold pistachio nut ice cream--a huge slab of it with goat cheese for four Euros.

Back in the town I walked around and almost missed the boat. They had pulled the gangplank back and the sea was incredibly choppy. I had to run all the way back from the dock. "Can you swim?" asked a crew member, but then he put the gangplank back. I was the last one on board. On the cruise back, we were given a "Greek folklore show" with two dancers in traditional costumes and a comic who did impressions of Elvis Presley, cats from different countries (saying meow in various accents), and dressed in drag as frumpy cleaning woman.

Back in Athens, I had the bus drop me off near the Plaka and I found a nice restautant where I had lamb wrapped in grape leaves. At the next table two flight attendants bitched about their jobs and it was more entertaining than the folklore show. Then back to the hotel and I watched Al Jazeera and BBC. The next day Jerry would return from Turkey and it would be the last full day in Greece.

A Christmas Yule Blog

It's Christmas Eve and something has been bothering me. You know that song "It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year"? You usually hear Andy Williams singing it while you're shopping for last minute gifts for people you don't really like at the K mart around the corner or on that lite music station that goes all-Xmas all-the-time on the day after Thanksgiving. Anyway, there's this one line: "There'll be scary ghost stories and tales of old glories of Christmases long, long ago." Who tells "scary ghost stories" on Christmas? Did the lyricist get yuletide mixed up with Halloween like in that Tim Burton movie? That's always bothered me.

In a similar vein, there was one Christmas when my family was visiting us upstate and we didn't tell scary ghost stories, but we did watch Westerns. American Movie Classics was showing a marathon of westerns. I think they called it Cowboys at Christmas or something. This was when the network actually lived up to its name and showed old movies instead of Mad Men, Breaking Bad, and 1980s movie bombs. I'l watch a Western if it's good--like The Searchers, High Noon, or Stagecoach. But my dad likes anything with horses and guns--literally, he will watch the worst piece of crap you can imagine as long as there is a shoot-out in it somewhere. So after turkey dinner, we gathered round the electronic fire and viewed Winchester 73 and Bend in the River, both starring Jimmy Stewart.

Winchester 73 has everybody you could think of in it--Stewart, Shelley Winters, Tony Curtis (when he was still Bernie Schwartz), Will Geer (Grampa Walton as Doc Holliday), Dan Dureya as a snivelling coward (his usual role), Rock Hudson as an Indian brave, and that guy who played the studio head in Singin' in the Rain.

Bend in the River was later in Stewart's career. Big, technicolor epic. You can picture seeing it at the drive-in with the whole family on a Saturday night and being overwhelmed by the color and the wide vistas. Stewart co-starred with another big cast, agin with Rock Hudson (he was still doing second leads), Arthur Kennedy as the villain, Henry Morgan before Dragnet and MASH,and Aunt Bee from the Andy Griffin Show. It was almost like we were out on the plains, because it gets really dark upstate.

A Day at Delphi

(ATHENS, GREECE) Wednesday Dec. 16, we took a day trip to Delphi. Our driver was named Mike and he was excellent. Along the way--it was about two and half hours outside Athens--we stopped at the new Olympic stadium, an olive oil factory, a cheese store, a touristy place in this skiing village where we bought a pair of gloves and a statue of Hermes. At Delphi, the main attraction is the Temple of Apollo where oracles would breath in fumes and make with the prophesies. As I said in my previous Athens post, this reminds me on when Steeve Reeves went to the Oracle at Delphi and she told him something about not displeasing his father Zeus. He was to stay on earth for a while. Then it rained and Steeve got all those gorgeous muscles soaking wet and... but I digress.

There was also the temple of Athena and a museum with the finer pieces and statues found at the temple. The temple was set in a mountain and it meant a long climb up. Afterwards, as it was getting dark, one of Jerry's therapist colleagues wanted to see the crossroads where Oedipus killed his father Laius. Mike was not familiar with the spot, but he found out from another driver named George where it was. Evidently, once in 15 years someone had asked to see it. There is no sign or plaque or anything to mark the legendary encounter. There was a memorial to an accident victim (pictured). There are dozens of these along the road from Athens to Delphi. Simple boxes mounted on poles with pictures of the victim, flowers, icons, etc. They are like folk art and I took a picture of the one by the Oedipus crossroads. If I were a professional photographer I would go to Greece and take pictures of all these home-made memorials.

One more thing about Hercules: I used to watch the TV cartoon series in the 1960s and it totally departed from the classic myths. In this version, which came on Sundays on this cheesey local Philadelphia kid's show hosted by a clown named Lorzeno,Herc has a magic ring which gave him his super strength and an annoying sidekick--a centaur named Newton. There was also a girlfriend named Helena, an evil wizard named Daedalus, and a witch named Wilhelmina who has a parrot. None of these elements occured in ancient Greece, except Daedalus was a kind inventor who was the father of Icarus.

Stopolis at the Acropolis or It's Just a Big Pile of Rocks

(ATHENS, GREECE) I arrived here in Athens Sunday morning after a flight which left JFK on Saturday afternoon. I took some anti-jet lag pills and felt fine. (Delta is pretty cheap by the way, they don't even have those TV sets in the back of the seats.) Jerry and his colleagues were off to their conference, so I looked in the guide book and discovered the guard was changed in front of the Parliment building at 11AM every Sunday. If I hurried I would just make it. I found the metro (notice that only in America is it called the subway) and saw the elaborate ceremony with the soliders in their traditional uniforms with the white skirts, tasselled slippers, and funny hats. There are 400 pleats in each skirt for the 400 years of Turkish occupation.

Then I walked to the flea market and from there to the Acropolis area. It was a long walk, but I finally found it. Across the street was Hadrian's Gate and the remains of the temple of Olympian Zeus which is a series of huge columns and a pile of rocks as a result of earthquakes. I then walked up the hill to the Acropolis--steep and tiring. It was actually warm, a shock considering how cold it was in NYC. The Acropolis is a series of temples erected to the gods. The main one is the Parthenon, built to honor Athena, goddess of wisdom and the protector of the city. The pediments--which are reconstructed in the new Acropolis museum--depict the birth of Athena and her contest with Poseidon, her uncle, for the right to be patron of the new city later called Athens in her honor.

The legend goes that Zeus, king of the gods, had a terrible headache. Hepheseus, god of fire and the forge, split his head open with an axe to relieve the pain (they obviously didn't have a public option) and out sprang Athena, fully grown in armor and full of her father's wisdom. I'm sure Zeus said, "What the hell was that?" The other pediment depicts Athena's contest with her uncle Poseidon, Zeus's brother, for control of the city. Poseidon struck the earth and produced a sword. Athena did the same and out sprang an olive tree-symbol of peace. Athena won!

My quesion is how does this jibe with all those Hercules movies starring dreamy Steeve Reeves? And does it overlap with the Thor comics where Hercules fights Thor and somehow Asgard and Mount Olympus both exist in the modern world? Jack Kirby later offers a different explanation in his The Eternals.

Anyway, we all got together and had drinks at the Hotel Bretany. On Monday, we visited the Archaeological Museum with plenty of hot male statues. Tuesday, we went back to the Acropolis--I was the only one who had already been. We--myself, Jerry and two colleagues--hired a guide named Athena who explained quite a bit while the winds howled and dogs followed us barking and humping each other. There are a lot of stray dogs and cats around the Acropolis, but not as many as in Istanbul. I was surprised there was no audio guide you could rent. After all, this is one of the most famous--if not THE most famous--spots in the world. Probably guides like Athena who are unionized fought tooth and nail to prevent this potential dent in their income.

After the Acropolis, we walked through the Agora, the ancient marketplace where most of the Athenians did their daily thing. The most interesting site was the prison where Socrates was executed for thinking a bit too freely. He drank hemlock. There was nothing left of the site. But it was moving to think a philosopher could be killed for exercising freedom of thought--and it still happens today.

The next day we took a day trip to Delphi which I will detail in the next post.

Barefoot in Athens

(ATHENS, GREECE) Here's another travel tip for you. If you happen to be in Athens and you have to ride the metro, avoid crowds and keep your wallet in your inside shirt pocket with your jacket zipped up. Yesterday, my partner Jerry was rushing onto the metro in a vey big crowd--Athens is terribly crowded--I got into the car ahead of him. There was a bunch of young men pushing and shoving. Jerry got into the car and the young men got out, acting as if they were on the wrong train. We looked down and saw a wallet on the floor. At first we thought it belonged to somebody else, but then Jerry reached into his pants and realized it was his. I suddenly said, "Check to make sure you haven't been robbed." He opened the wallet and all the cash--Euros and dollars-- were gone. The young men had distracted him so he didn't even feel the wallet had been lifted.

Well, what can you do? We had enough money elsewhere and we managed to get some cash from a Greek ATM. Strangely enough, I was reading an interview with Diane von Furstenberg in the Delta magazine on the plane coming over and she was pickpocketed on a recent European trip. Other than that we've had fun--the Acropolis, Agora, Plaka, wonderful food. More from Greece later.

Pre-Greece Jitters

Here's a travel tip for you: If you want to check-in online the night before your international flight, make sure your passport isn't going to expire in less than three months. I'm leaving for Athens tomorrow and I received an email from Delta inviting me to check in online. I go to the website, punch in my passport number and expiration date which is next Feb. and I get one of the little red lines saying "You cannot check in if your passport expires within three months. You must see an agent at the airport." My heart stopped. I have visions of having to go the Greek embassy or winding up like Zev and Justin of The Amazing Race when they lost their passports in Cambodia and losing first place. So I called Delta and was on hold for 20 minutes--don't worry I amused myself by watching Jonny Quest--it was the one set in Norway with the acrobatic dwarf disguised as a gargoyle in order to steal the anti-gravity device.

Finally a human got on the line and explained when your passport is within three months of expiring you're not allowed to check in on line. They have to make sure you won't stay past your expiration date--they think of you like a quart of milk. But I said I'm returning in a week, it's even on my return ticket. For some reason, they need a human agent to verify you won't get stuck in Athens for three months.

Oh well, it's off to the airport tomorrow. I'm taking the E train all the way to nearly the last stop and getting on the airtrain to JFK. This is the first time I've done it going to the airport, I've done it coming back. I was tempted to go a comic book sale in the morning, but it's deep in Brooklyn and with this new wrinkle, I want to get to the airport in plenty of time. I'll have to skip it.

I do like travelling in spite of these little hiccups. I love my little blue bag of toiletries I can hang on the towel rack in the hotel. I love sitting in the airport terminal reading a left-over copy of USA Today. There's a travel store on 12th St. where I bought some anti-jetlag pills. They had two fascinating books--one with transit maps from all over the world and another filled with pictures of tickets--from airlines, trains, theatres again from all over the world. There is some fascinating about these little souvenirs and scraps of paper giving glimpses of yours or other people's lives. I bought a Thor comic at Time Machine the other day. (It was #128 with Thor and Hercules fighting the forces of Pluto, the god of hell.) Inside the plastic bag containing it was a credit card receipt dated 2000 from a comic book store in Scranton, PA. I wondered who bought it there and how it wound up in New York. Will someone look at my boarding pass and think "That idiot should have renewed his passport sooner."?

Gay Marriage in the Garden State

I don't know if I can live through this again. The New Jersey State Senate will take up the gay marriage debate and vote on it by the end of this week or early next week. I'll be in Europe then so I won't be thinking about it, but it's really rattling me that my value as a member of society is being decided. Well, maybe that's an exaggeration. The thing is they are bringing this to a vote before governor Corzine leaves office because he said he would sign it into law and his Republican sucessor Christie (not to confused with Florida's closeted Republican Christ) would veto it without hestitation. What a fat pig! (I said it and I'm glad!)

I was trolling the internet and came across a story about a rabbi who was speaking out against this gay marriage bill, I presume to the NJ senate or a committee that was voting on the bill. The rabbi said he pitied a poor lonely orphaned child who would be forced to be adopted by a gay couple. That didn't bother me as much as David Link, a gay blogger at Independent Gay Forum.com who said we shouldn't think of this well-intentioned man as a bigot. That we should be careful in labelling those who speak against us as bigots. Link goes on to say we should be generous and give the rabbi the benefit of the doubt.

"That is a blindness, but I don’t think it is necessarily blameworthy. To my mind, it not as condemnable as the actions of those who can (and do) see us in our ordinary lives, yet intentionally exploit the bias against us for political advantage. The harm to our equality is the same in either case, but there is a moral difference that we should acknowledge. (HA!)

It is possible this learned man falls into the latter category. But until we know for sure, I don’t think we can call him a bigot. We can, though, wish him to see us more generously."

I'm sorry, but this man IS a bigot. He is making judgments about people he doesn't even know based on their sexuality. He's presuming a gay couple will automatically be a harmful influence and can in no way be fit parents. That is the same as saying something sweeping about all Jews, blacks, or Latinos, etc. When will people wake up. Call things by their proper name--it's bigotry and I have no respect for those who spout it or those who excuse it.

I'm afraid we'll lose again in New Jersey. The economy's to blame, apologists say. People aren't concerned about gay rights when they can't put twinkies on the table. Horse Hockey!, as Colonel Potter used to say on MASH. It's not like we're going to stop legisilation to get married. If anything, gay marriage helps a state's economy. All those New Yorkers deprived of getting married will cross the border into Weehawken where enterprising preachers will join them and they can return to the Empire State where their union will be recognized.

The Amazing Race Finale--How Sweet the Sound

This was one of the better finale episodes because any one of the three teams could have won. They were all on the same flight from Prague to Vegas and at every challenge they were all right on each other's heels. I did not want Meghan and Cheyne to win because I hate it when the expected team triumphs. I would have prefered Team Zebra or even the gay brothers which would have driven 90 percent of the viewership crazy. And how could they not know who the final team was when they were in the airport in Prague? Did they stop sequestering everyone together?

I guess Meghan and Chayne did deserve to win. Despite going to the wrong hotel for the penultimate challenge and Cheyne closing his eyes during the face-first repel, they finished counting the million in chips first because they kept their cool and didn't get all flustered like Dan did. Now on the Amazing Race 16.

I got a Facebook email from my friend and fellow TAR enthuiast Lydia that several teams were seen leaving the LA airport on Nov. 28 for The Amazing Race 16 including two guys from Big Brother 11--I have no idea who they are, the only Big Brother I watched was the one with Evil Dick--and a former Miss South Carolina who gave the stupidest answer in the history of pageantdom--even dumber than Carrie Prejean's. This girl's the one who didn't know her geography very well and just rambled for 15 minutes. They made a joke about the irony of her being on the Amazing Race on The Soup this weekend, so it must be true. Will the new Amazing Race 16 overlap with Project Runway 7 so my life will have meaning again?

Final summary Day 17--leave Prague, fly to Vegas with a layover in London. Day 18--race to Elvis impersonator chapel--was the real the wedding for that couple? I hope not; face-first repel (BTW, how could you not know Monte Carlo is the capital of Monaco?), Cirque du Soleil challenge, race to the MGM to meet a face-lifted Wayne Newton, finish line at Newton's house. Malibu Ken and Barbie win, Sam and Dan second, Erika and Brian third. We now know Erika's family hasn't fully accepted Brian because of his race, but is Brian's family all hunky-dory with the whole interracial thing? I guess so.

Blanches and Hamlets I Have Known

Last night we went to see Cate Blanchett in A Streetcar Named Desire at BAM. Here are all the Blanche DuBoises I have seen:
1. Vivien Leigh (1951 movie version)
2. Shirley Knight (1976 in Philadelphia, I think it was the McCarter Theatre)
3. Blythe Danner (Circle In the Square, 1988 or so)
4. Jessica Lange (1992 Broadway with Alec Baldwin, she also did it for TV)
5. Ann-Margret (also TV version opposite Treat Williams)
6. Elizabeth Marvel (weird-ass New York Theatre Workshop production)
7. Natasha Richardson (Roundabout Theatre Company)
8. Marin Mazzie (2009 Berkshire Theatre Festival)
9. Cate Blanchett

Hamlet seems to be the male equivalent of Blanche as a role much sought after. Here are all the Hamlets I can remember seeing:
1. Laurence Olivier (1940s film version)
2. John Glover (1976 or 77, Walnut Street Theater. I remember a girl I knew in high school saying "Hamlet's a fox")
3. Derek Jacobi (BBC TV version, ironically Patrick Stewart was Claudius and later played it opposite David Tenant's Hamlet. Tenant is Doctor Who and that Hamlet is going to be on TV next year sometime)
4. Kevin Kline (twice at the Public)
5. Mel Gibson (1990s movie)
6. Kenneth Branagh (later 1990s movie)
7. Stephen Lange (crappy Roundabout Thetre version)
8. Peter Stomare (Ingmar Bergman production at BAM in Swedish)
9. Villanova production, two or three Off-Off-Bway productions I can't remember
10. Ralph Fiennes (on Broadway)
11. Maggie Smith's son (in London)
12. Michael Stuhlbarg (in Central Park last summer)
13. Jude Law
14. Richard Burton (on a DVD of his 1964 Broadway performance, he was in love with the sound of his own voice and not playing the part)
15. Bob Denver (in the musical version on Gilligan's Island--"Neither a borrower nor a lender be/ There's just one other thing you've got to do/ To thine own self be true!"--directed by Ida Lupino).

The Check-Out Line at Whole Foods and Other Sources of Aggravation

Have you ever shopped at Whole Foods? You need a engineering degree to figure out the check-out line. While buying French butter with my partner at said establishment, I commented that it was like being in a sci-fi movie where you would be zapped if you didn't unscramble the code of numbers and letters to get you out of the maze on the hostile planet. There are five separate lines to stand in, each with it own color. When you get to the front of your respective line you are confronted with this giant Bingo board with various numbers lighting up. You have to match the number to your color. If you are standing in the red line, you have to wait until a number shows up in red on the giant screen and then you go the register with the corresponding number. There are about 40 registers. The only trouble is the colors on the board don't always match the color of the lights. I was standing in the purple line and the one on the board was more of a blue.

In other grocery store aggravation news, I was standing behind two young women at Food Emporium the other day. They were purchasing some product and disputing the price with the cashier. She had to call her supervisor who checked and found out that the larger size of the item was on sale, not the size the two customers wanted. They said never mind and left without buying anything. What an outrage and a crime against humanity. They wasted five of my valuable minutes. Some people.

2012 GOPers A Panicked Herd of Elephants

The Republican field of 2012 presidential hopefuls continues to shift and reshape itself. Mike Huckabee appears to have met his Willie Horton for pardoning a convict while he was governor of Arkansas. The guy recently killed some police officers. Pope Billy O'Reilly has officially granted him clemency with a dispensation from on high: "It wasn't your fault, governor." I will say that at least Huckabee stands by his faith and isn't a mean-spirited, nasty sort like most of them--like the senators who remain silent on the gay-execution law in Uganda. (Rachel Maddow did a whole tihng on the connection between the Family on C Street and anti-AIDS money going to Uganda tonight, but I digress).

Mitt Romney--as some clever person called him on the Huffington Post--Guy Smiley (the mupper game show host on Sesame Street) continues to try to grab our attention with an editorial in USA Today advocating deregulating Wall Street because that worked out so well last time.

Lou Dobbs is apparently getting all soft on them foreigners and Dick Chaney just says forget it. Who's left? Oh yes, Sarah Palin. I came across a special magazine devoted to her at Wal Mart. She just wants low taxes, no government interference, and lots of military protection.

No Gay Marriage in NY Thanks to Hiram the Hypocrite

(Pictured: A loving couple unable to be married)Today I went from elation to depression. The day started with the news the NY State Senate would debate and vote on Governor Patterson's gay marriage bill. There was talk it might actually pass. I watched live streaming of the debate and only heard those in favor deliver passionate and moving arguments. I had to go into a meeting and when I emerged I heard the measure was defeated. To make matters worse, my state senator voted no. Guess who he is? Hiram Monseratte, the shining example of healthy heterosexual relationships who slashed his girlfriend Karla Giraldo and was almost jailed for it. The only reason he got off was because the stupid woman refused to testify against him and claimed it was accident. Not coincidentally, he agreed to marry her. Her silence or rather compliance was bought for a ring on her finger--excellent way to help stabilize the institution of marriage.

I called Monseratte's office in Albany and unloaded on an innocent office aide. "I know you only work there and have no influence on the senator, but I'm going to say this anyway. Who the hell is he with his personal history to pass judgement on anyone else's relationship? Slashing your girlfriend's face is not going to bolster the sagging sacred institute of marriage." The worker thanked me for not getting mad at him personally and said he would tell Monseratte my feelings. I also said I would remember this vote at election time.

Obviously the popular vote against us in Maine and California has moderate Democrats scared and Republicans emboldened. Do they really think they would be voted out if they favored gay marriage? But I am confident time is on my side. Younger people are fine with gay marriage. The day will come when our great-great grandchildren will say to each other "Can you believe those bigoted old pigs, voting to deny marriage equality?" Just as we now say to each other "I can't believe people used to actually believe slavery was perfectly okay."